Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

Further embarrassment for Mitt

He can't even win New Hampshire, one of the key states he's losing. Nate Silver reports that Obama has led in those key states in no fewer than 21 polls, since the Democratic convention, with at least 6 points.

Aside from New Hampshire, this holds true for Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Those are big ouches for the Romney campaign.

President Obama’s position inched forward in the FiveThirtyEight
forecast on Thursday. His chances of winning the Electoral College are
76.1 percent, according to the forecast, up from 75.2 percent on
Wednesday. Mr. Obama’s projected margin of victory in the national
popular vote also increased slightly, to 3.4 percentage points.

By and large, the story that Thursday’s polls told was the same one as on Wednesday.
Mr. Obama continues to get very strong results in state polls that use
industry-standard methodology, meaning that they use live interviews and
place calls to mobile phones along with landlines....

....Mr. Obama’s results have been more varied among polling firms that use different methodologies. A series of polls
in eleven swing states, released on Thursday by the online firm YouGov,
were fairly strong for Mr. Obama, putting him ahead among likely voters
in all of the states except North Carolina.But automated polls,
like those from the Rasmussen Reports, have had lukewarm results for Mr.
Obama. A Rasmussen Reports poll released on Thursday, for instance, put
Mr. Obama three points behind in Iowa...Nate Silver, 538, NYT.

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Need more embarrassing news for Mitt to get you through the weekend? How 'bout his relationship to the IRS?

Mitt Romney paid $1.95 million in taxes on his 2011 investment income of
$13.7 million, his campaign revealed on Friday, saying it will make
good Friday afternoon on Mr. Romney’s promise earlier this year to
eventually release his full returns for that year. ...Caucus, NYT

Wait, wait, there's more!

Mr. Romney’s lawyer said on the campaign’s Web site that the
candidate would release a letter later Friday from his tax advisers
providing a summary of his tax liability for a 20-year period from 1990
to 2009. The campaign said the summary would show that Mr. Romney paid
taxes every year during that period, that the lowest annual federal tax
rate was 13.66 percent and that the Romneys gave an average of 13.45
percent of their income to charity during the period.Mr. Romney,
who made millions by running Bain Capital, a private equity firm, paid
about 14.1 percent in taxes, the campaign said, primarily because most
of his income was in the form of capital gains that are taxed at a lower
rate than ordinary income. Mr. Romney has said that he has paid at
least 13 percent in federal income taxes in each of the last 10 years. ...Caucus, NYT